Dyson ex-engineer launches business making coronavirus face shields in his local church

JUST three weeks ago, doctor friends of ex-Dyson designer Edward Chudleigh told him there was an urgent need for personal protective equipment (PPE), especially face masks. So he set about creating full-face shields, put up an assembly line in his local church to make them and so far has shipped 16,000 to NHS hospitals across the country, with total orders of 36,000.

The volunteers hard at work making the masks and social distancing (Image: Andrew Lloyd)

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“Engineering has always been in my blood,” says 40-year-old Mr Chudleigh. “When I left Dyson after 11 years I started my own robotics lab in Bath. I bought 3-D printers and laser cutters.” He designed a prototype using readily available materials and showed them to his medical friends.

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“It took off from there. At the start we were producing a new model every 24 hours. We got feed-back from Covid-19 wards and then improved the product during the night. The product is essentially made by robots and we can tweak how they cut it. “

He started making them in small quantities in his own basement lab but as the demand grew he contacted local hi-tech businesses who had furloughed their staff to get them on board too.

It is completely self-funded.

“We took out big loans to get it all started. Hospital procurement chains are quite tricky and it’s difficult to get money through, but we needed to buy the materials to start with.”

Mr Chudleigh welcomes donations from Express readers and they can contact him via his organisation website Foldall.

He’s got the support of his local MP, Wera Hobhouse, and is asking Secretary of State for Health Matt Hancock for funding.

In the meantime, he’s taken over his local church of St Michael’s Without in the centre of Bath to build the face shields.

“The Reverend Roger Driver kindly said his church was at my disposal and he even donated part of the building’s curtains for us to cut up to help with our machinery. It’s a bit of a cottage industry.”

Local residents have been keen volunteers, helping to assemble the masks made out of silicone and medical foam.

“I feel really proud of my friend Ed,” says local businesswoman Lucy Simon. “It’s been quite a moving experience to sit in a beautiful church over Easter, when all others are closed, and feel the community spirit of everyone working efficiently like bees in a hive, two metres apart of course.”

These volunteers even pitched in to deliver the masks to hospitals over the bank holiday when couriers weren’t available.

“We’re all doing this for the love of the NHS,” says Mr Chudleigh, “and to make sure they’re all right.”

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nearby school.

A shocking aspect of the project is the shortage of raw materials.

“We’ve had to enter into bidding wars with people buying up various components. Some stockpiling them, waiting for the prices to go up.”

Mr Chudleigh is very much an advocate of the UK making much more of our own medical kit, rather than shipping it from abroad from places like China.

“It’s a financial strain on this country and projects like this can help alleviate that. All our components are made in the UK, apart from the screen itself which comes from Germany.”

He is delighted to be following in the footsteps of top entrepreneurs like Sir James Dyson and Sir Jim Ratcliffe who have quickly turned their industrial might towards helping the battle against coronavirus.

“They’ve inspired me with their get up and go attitude—the Dunkirk spirit to get it done no matter what the boundaries are.”

When not making face shields, Mr Chudleigh is a commercial pilot which helps fund his passion for creating robot kinetic sculptures.

He also helps other start-ups develop products.

With a degree from Brunel University, he was invited to work for Dyson’s West Country-based company as a graduate design engineer, where he became a design manager, during which he spent much time with founder Sir James Dyson.